Unemployment News

Release Date: 2017-04-24

When I took office almost three years ago, economic development and growing local jobs were my top priorities. Today, we are happy to announce that Long Beach has a 4.7% unemployment rate - the lowest level it's been in more than a decade. That’s better than the California rate at 4.9%.

In 2010, at the lowest point in the Great Recession, Long Beach was one of the cities hit hardest by unemployment. We were at 14.6% unemployment, worse than Los Angeles County, and higher than the rest of the state of California. Looking back now, I am inspired by the hard work that all our residents, business owners, entrepreneurs, and elected officials accomplished to lower unemployment back down by almost 10 percentage points.

As I reported last week, we are planning a 2018 city budget with no deficit, the first time in years. Further, our Economic Development Commission, an advisory group to the City Council, in collaboration with the Economic and Property Development Department, prepared a Draft Blueprint for Economic Development. This Blueprint provides a snapshot of economic trends in the City, and makes recommendations to the City Council and me about opportunities for growth in key industries, business assistance, and economic inclusion among other focuses.

As we look for more opportunities to grow our economy, raise annual income for our residents, and build more housing, it’s going to take continued efforts from all corners of our city, but I know we can do it. I look forward to working with our workforce, investors, and entrepreneurs to make Long Beach everyone’s first choice to live and work.